Aigronne Valley Wildlife pages

Tuesday, 29 January 2013

Looking out of the bedroom window this morning I spotted the Buzzard [Buteo buteo] Buse variable I call "Osprey" busily eating something near to the field seed feeder...

Busy feeding... the white line is feathers!

I went into the guest room to try and get a picture that wasn't through the willow...

But these were the best I could get [at 800ASA in the poor light]... here it is pulling hard at some flesh.

First thoughts were that it had got a pheasant...
but we could see all ten of the Dopey Dorises...
had it taken the Jeremy?

Seven of Ten... the Dopey Dorises under the feeder...

I thought not... the trail of plucked feathers were too white... and then I saw the Jeremy in the field the other side of the Aigronne, parleying with some crows.
were there eleven females around then?

These two shots show why I call it Osprey...

...the position of the white on the breast and head, front and, here, back... coupled with the colour of the wings...
make it look very much like an Osprey[Pandion haliaetus] Balbuzard pêcheur when it is upright on a post...
especially by the étang!!

I wasn't going to investigate quite at that moment.... the rain was drifting in sheets across the meadow, in the strong winds!
The buzzard wasn't at all worried by a little rain... it just kept on feeding.
It was there for around an hour... eating all the time.
It then stood there... open beak and hanging wings... panting... trying to cool off...
[all birds do this after a very large meal... their metabolism is such that they heat up very rapidly after a good feast]
... before flying up into a carefully "fallen" tree...
where it rested a while before flying off.

When there was a break in the rain, I put my boots on and went to inspect the kill...

As you can see from the last of the above pictures, it was no pheasant...
not with feet like that!

It was a Barn Owl[Tyto alba] Effraie des clochers... possibly the one that was using our "donkey shed" this summer... who knows?
There was certainly nothing that could be described as identifiable remains of that one...
it was quite a dark morph... but you'd need more than was left here to see that...
the buzzard had eaten all but a few feathers, the pelvis and the feet!

It had also left the next pellet / stomach contents...

I found this when I moved some feathers... so I'm pretty sure that it doesn't belong to the Buzzard.

...that will give me a clue as to what the owl was finding...
not much probably, there are beetle wing cases in the pellet...
the whole valley is thoroughly water-logged...
it's no place for voles!!

There has been standing water since Christmas in all the grazing meadows...
the places that the owl is most likely to hunt...
and in the ploughed [and in some cases, planted] fields that are also in the flood plain...
there are vast open areas on "the tops"...
but even there, you can see the standing water!

This is a hard time for the night raptors that have a major diet of voles...
it is probably bad for the Little Owl [Athena noctua] Chêveche d'Athéna that lives up by Bezuard...
there will be few insects available...
it will be having a "diet of wurms".

If as I suspect, there has been a crash in the vole population....
it is the top predators, in this case raptors, that suffer first.

Our cat has only managed a couple of voles since Christmas...
and just before the last snow, the local Kestrel took a bird as prey off our front door.
So their pickings are meagre...
Baron has his tinned food and the Kestrel has switched to birds.
You should see them scatter when it is about... normally they ignore it!

The Barn Owls are unlikely to try that...

The Tawny Owl [Strix aluco] Chouette hulotte is probably OK up there in the woods...
there will be field mice around...
and possibly Bank Voles...
and probably an "invasion" of water displaced refugees...
so it is sitting pretty!

The Barn Owl can probably hunt on the fringes of the woods...
but it would not be instinctive...
so it is most probable that the poor Barn Owl here was either an older bird...
or one of this years young [the dried feathers will give me some idea]...
but, either way it would be starving and may have succumbed in the last snowfall.

The Buzzard is a well known scavenger and saw its chance of a good meal in hard times.

We can feed the small passerines, and some of the more adaptable insectivores...
the Robin was using the fat balls last year in the freeze...
but there is no way of feeding the raptors...
other than making sure there is a supply of passerines for those that will take them.

So, sad though it is, we will probably see fewer Barn Owls around next year...
they start breeding early in the year and, unless vole numbers increase rapidly...
they won't be able to feed two or three owlets...
so it will take a few years for a good population to build.

Apologies if you found this upsetting... believe me, I did when I discovered that it was a Barn Owl...

but that's life... and our valley will find more Barn Owls coming by! In fact I have a very large nest box to put up... a Barn Owl box... it will be going in the trees by the Aigronne.

On a lighter note the "smell chequer" didn't recognise passerines... it wanted me to put pessaries!

Tuesday, 22 January 2013

We haven't seen these here... yet! And probably won't... it would take a very hard winter!
A very, very hard winter...
Although they have been recorded as far south in France as Nice and Biarritz [1988/89]...
but my brother took these wonderful pictures at the w/e ...
he'd been following the waxwingsuk twitter feed...
now... that IS what twittering is for...
and I thought I'd share three of them with you.

The last one is superb... Pauline and I have seen Waxwings in Leeds before... but never this clearly....
There are loads in the UK at the moment... the berries they normally eat grew very poorly this year and they've been driven across in their search for food.

The ones we saw in Leeds noisily stripped out about a dozen, heavily laden Rowan trees... and left!!
And it is unlikely that they'll still be where my bro' saw them either.

Tuesday, 15 January 2013

Susan "Days on the Claise" commented on her weather report for 2012 that the Orchid season, in the Chaumussay area, was pretty good last year...
but I felt that it wasn't as good as we'd seen...
possibly because of the drought the year before.

Not that that really matters when you get orchids like these...
all these pictures...
including the non-Orchids in the next post, were taken within one kilometre of each other...

I'll use the captions to identify each one... where I can that is.... there are a lot of hybrids at this site...

I hope these pictures brighten this cold, grey period.

Monkey Orchid [Orchis simia] Orchis singe...
one of the most common at this spot... usually
present in great swathes... but not this year.

Monkey Orchid [Orchis simia] Orchis singe...
You can see the faces of the monkeys
quite clearly on these two pictures.

Lady Orchid [Orchis purpurea] Orchis pourpre...
She is a very "loose" Lady this one... there are
numerous different hybrids with both O. simia
and O. anthropophora. This example is close
to type...

Lady Orchid [Orchis purpurea] Orchis pourpre...
...as is this one... but you can see clearly that
the "skirts" are different... both in shape and
in the "pattern"... wave to the Lady, she is
waving at you!!

Not aLady Orchid...
this one is probably a hybrid between
the Lady Orchid and the Man Orchid...
a rather suitable hybrid I feel!!

Man Orchid [Orchis anthropophora] Orchis homme-pendu...
the hanged man... not a nice name in French...
but suited to the image.

Pyramidal Orchid [Anacamptis pyramidalis] Orchis pyramidal...
an attractive little plant... the ones on the way into Chaumussay
from Le Petit Pressigny are better shaped and easily seen from
the car, but there is nowhere to park... these ones are not as big
but much easier to photograph.

Caption is with the following picture...

Two Spider Orchids [Ophrys sp.] Ophrys araignée...
Comparing the two pictures you will notice that they are
wearing different "waistcoats" and the arms of the
"teddy bears" are different shapes. These all hybridise
very readily so could be closer to Ophrys araneola
than O. sphegodes... I am basing this assumption on
the very clear face of the "bear",

Twayblade [Listera ovata] Listère ovale...
often overlooked because of its green colouration,
this orchid is not uncommon.

Twayblade [Listera ovata] Listère ovale...
close to, the flowers are really quite attractive.
There is someone else hanging around in this
picture... a small, green spider... hunting the flies
that come to pollinate the orchid.

The little spider is most likely Araniella cucurbitina...
so named for the abdomen's resemblance to a cucumber.
What look like a pair of eyes in this picture are, in fact,the palps.

Thursday, 10 January 2013

Flock of Siskin (Carduelis spinus) Tarin des aulnes working one of the alders [aulnes] near the kitchen door this morning...

Alder Catkins and Pussy Willow... from March 2012.The Siskins were feeding on the little round "cones"and not these catkins... but we need a lift and I thoughtthat the golden sunshine looked warming!

A Great White Egret (Ardea alba alba) Grande Aigrette in the valley... near Gatault on the D103 on the way in to Le Grand Pressigny... it was in the company of around seven Grey Herons (Ardea cinerea) Héron cendré [who were probably saying to each other "Who's that flash b'stard then?"]

Pauline wasn't sure about the max temperature for August and
September... I checked against the actual readings and discovered we had
no temperature data for August!
We definately had a 30°C day...
But it is those average [mean] temperatures that show the overall chill of this year... we've not worn "Summer" clothes much at all... and whilst the crops grew... many went straight to seed in an effort to reproduce and survive!! Nothing could be said to have thrived!

Spotted on the Web

We collect links to interesting Natural History & Environmental stories that we spot on the Interweb...this is where we draw your attention to them...[and there is an archive page of the same name... where you can also leave comments]

"In the past few years there has been a "wild food" boom with celebrity chefs heading for the great outdoors in search of fresh ingredients. So, how practical is it to live solely on wild food? And does spurning the supermarket, as some critics have claimed, make you just a bit annoying?"

Wildlife in the Aigronne and Touraine du Sud

Based at our house near Le Grand Pressigny, we are centrally placed between The Brenne & The Loire Anjou Touraine National Parks and the Sologne, enabling us to observe wild events and discover new [to us] insects, plants and birds.

We started this record in 2003, when we bought La Forge and from time to time we will be publishing the odd species list of what we've seen here at La Forge and in the immediate vicinity.

We've also been building a collection of finds, mainly from prehistory... we record those as well on the blog Touraine Flint.As well as pictures on this site, we've been posting to flickr.

Guided Tours in a lovely limo!

Susan&Simon from Days on the Claise have another blog, Loire Valley Nature, which is "designed to be used as an English language natural history web resource for lowland central France." .

Please note:

The early listings were only a few observations with an entry and usually no record of numbers!They had been taken directly from our 'birders notebook'Where there are further details from the book we keep at the house, they will be added later.